Presentation of Learning

32Q Reflection

Three things to celebrate

I have grown as a writer this year, specifically a journalistic writer. The journalism project was the first journalistic writing I had done since seventh grade. Through Ally’s teaching, I developed a strong understanding of journalistic writing. In my final product, a piece on Donald Trump received an A. This was because I applied all content I learned into my work. I worked hard to write a persuasive piece based off of evidence. I believe the reason I did well on this was the language I used throughout my piece. Ally said on my riubric, "Your singular focus, super punchy thesis, and straightforward language were very impactful." My biggest struggle was trying to control my bias. Luckily, during my conference with Ally she helped me suppress my bias. The journalism project was my favorite project so far.

Another area of growth for me was memorization. I used memorization in the African country quizzes in humanities. I improved immensely throughout this process. I started out just trying to remember the countries and by the last quizzes, I answered all the extra credit questions. I really enjoyed these quizzes and I feel it reflected into my work because they were polished. I found my brain really remembers things when I use mnemonic devices. I tried to using rhyming and the way the letters of both the country and capital were formatted. Furthermore, I realized I actually enjoy this traditional style of learning.

My last celebration is my Things Fall Apart Seminar, I grew as a seminar speaker. I believe I broke out of my comfort zone during this seminar. I spoke more than I ever had and used evidence to back up claims. I kept tallies on my notes page and I spoke seven times throught out the seminarr and Ally said we should aim for around 6 comments. I believe I spoke an appropraite amount, I gave valid points without demonating the conversation. Additionally, in an email from Ally, she said, “You drew in evidence from throughout the book and got your perspective across without dominating.” Overall, I was very proud of myself after the seminar and I believe this will give me more confidence in my future seminars.

Two areas for growth

This year I am taking two math classes, Math 2 and Advanced Algebra. I am having trouble balancing Advanced Algebra and Math 2’s workload. I feel I am giving all my math attention to Advanced Algebra because it is such a hard class. This is reflected in my work in Math 2. For example, I was not proud of my work. I spent more time outside of school working on Advanced Algebra when I should have balanced my time and researched my logic project more. I believe this is reflected in my knowledge because I still feel like I do not have a strong understanding of logic. Next semester I will work on sharing my time between Advanced Algebra and Math 2.

My next area of growth I need to improve on is that I focus too much on deadlines and not beautiful work. This was very apparent in my last Spanish project. In Spanish during the Calavera project, I was so focused on finishing the project on time. I came upon an obstacle, where my wet calavera got another placed on top of it and most of my work got ripped. I did not spend anytime refining it. I just turned it in to complete the deadline. This showed in my work because it was sloppy and unprofessional. Next time, I will accept a late grade but make a polished piece I am proud of.